This isn't going to help Apopka, Florida's reputation as a place where stupidity reigns in public life: school teachers put eighth-graders through an abusive day-long demonstration of discrimination.
Apparently it's OK for teachers and administrators to subject children to unjust treatment if they're doing it for a "progressive" purpose. I thought this sort of experiment was a fad that ended in the '70s, but officials in Florida still need to get some education themselves about Ethical Restrictions on Human Experimentation. To start with, experimenting on people without their consent has to be totally excluded.
Somebody please sic on the lawyers on these people.
This happened to me when I was in middle school (about 1997).
My first-period class was literature, and we were covering books like "The Diary of Anne Franke" and "Number the Stars". My class all got armbands and the entire school treated us like outcasts for the entire day.
When it happened, it was uncomfortable but I felt I learned alot.
And no one in the community made a peep - that I was aware of.
Maybe it was wrong. I was young then, and not about to question my teacher's.
+J.M.J+
I remember hearing about a teacher who did a similar exercise with her class in the late 1960's, I think. Went by eye color, if I remember correctly. Her effort to teach the kids to not be racist evidently worked and she was commended for it. I wonder if her program differed from what they did in Apopka.
In Jesu et Maria,